“Are their faces really different from our own? … There are those who refused to believe this. And there are those of us who sincerely look upon the ruins today … Those who pretend to take hope again as the image fades… Those of us who pretend to believe that all this happened only once, at a certain time and in a certain place, and those who refuse to see, who do not hear the cry to the end of time.” – from Night and Fog
I wonder how we can make a connection between the past incidents happened elsewhere and the current ground where we stand on. As written in Night and Fog, all historical incidents might have happened at a certain time, in a certain place and by certain people. At the same time, those incidents may be repeated again at different time, in a different place and by different people. Among the photographs I found during my research, there are many images that I want to shield my eyes from. When I look at these images, I often question myself: what would I have done if I were living at that time. Could I have acted differently or would I have just followed the dynamics of the war and repeated the same mistake?
History is a mysterious myth. Like novels by Haruki Murakami, by re-imagining the past, we come up with a more accurate picture of the present.